• FishFace@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    12 hours ago

    No, the best fit is much simpler. Republicans hate immigration and, to a large extent, hate immigrants. That means that a huge amount of measures that can be described as “anti-immigration” are popular with his voters. Illegally breaking into the apartments of US citizens, kidnapping them, then releasing them an hour or two later is obviously not “anti-immigration” but there are three caveats:

    • the regime can pretend it is the necessary consequence of being tough on immigration. It’s not; it’s a consequence that’s so severe that it needs to be avoided to the maximum extent practical. Human rights aren’t optional just because you’re trying to get rid of immigrants.
    • as long as the regime is targeting visible racial minorities, immigrants who are also not white are discouraged from coming to the US (legally or illegally) because they don’t want to get kidnapped and roughed up by the brownshirts
    • a lot of people (and this one is just as true for those on the left, it seems to me) judge everything based on vibes; kidnapping brown people has anti-immigrant vibes and so people against immigration are generally in favour of it.

    The first two combine with the fact that anti-immigrant Republicans generally don’t care about human rights to mean that the negative side (violation of human rights) doesn’t matter to them and the positive side (from their point of view - fewer immigrants) results in approval.

    When it comes to international relations things are different; there IMO it’s largely about Trump’s ego.